Providing our young
people with the skills,
the experience and the
opportunity to work is a key
element of our approach at
Prior's Court - and offering
the latter is something which
starts on site.
One of our young people, Ricardo
(pictured), has recently started a work
placement within our Estates team,
which manages the buildings, facilities
and grounds of our 55-acre site.
Ricardo's first task was to paint one
of the walls in our main Court House
building which is currently undergoing
a large-scale renovation.
Ricardo is one of the young people
in our Trade Skills vocational stream
in which he learns skills such as
woodworking, brick-laying and general
DIY, including painting.
The ambition for our young people
within our vocational streams is to
learn these skills within the classroom
and then transition them to work
placements internally and externally
and then onto paid work.
With the Trade Skills stream, not only
are these skills transferrable to the
world of work, they are also key life
skills which can help our young people
to live more independently in later life.
Jamie Yeates, Job Coach within the
stream, said: "As the stream developed,
we recognised that some of our young
people needed work placements to be
able to continue their progress.
"The Estates team has always been
very keen to have some of our young
people join them on work placements
so we explored how we could take this
forward.
"It was great to see this partnership
working come together and how much
Ricardo enjoys himself on this work
placement."
Mark Bailey, Estates Manager, said: "It
is very important that we as an Estates
team, and Prior's Court as a whole,
demonstrate the positive contributions
our young people can make to
the workplace and Ricardo's work
placement is a prime example of this."
The Trade Skills stream also works with
the Estates team to provide a cleaning
service to our fleet of minibuses.
Our film "Aim High for Autism: Let Me
Shine at Abbey Road" finished in second
place in the Charity Today Awards 2020.
The awards, held in July, were decided by a public
vote on Twitter with our entry finishing behind a
film by Down's Syndrome Association in the Film of
the Year category.
Our 12-minute film, created by Submotion
Productions, follows the journey of eight of our
young people as they travel to London's iconic
Abbey Road Studios to record their own single - Let
Me Shine - in 2019.
Congratulations to Down's Syndrome Association
and thank you to everyone who voted for and
shared our film and, by doing so, helped raise
awareness of our amazing young people. /priorscourt
Second place for Abbey Road film
Estates experience for our young people